Police have raided the most popular pirate streaming site in Sweden and are forcing it to shut down

Sweden's most popular pirate streaming site Swefilmer is being shut down for good.

Torrentfreak reports that Swedish police arrested the site's administrator earlier this month, seized some of his computer equipment, and detained him for almost four days. Yesterday, Ola Johansson went public with a YouTube video telling Swefilmer users that while the site is now back online, the police raid made it clear that it could not continue.

"It's been a tough month to say the least," he explained in the video. "On 8 July, I received a search by the police at home. I lost a computer, mobile phone and other things."

"I got to sit in jail for 90 hours. When I came out on Monday [after being raided on Wednesday] the site had been down since Friday."

Swefilmer will close down this Friday, Torrentfreak reports, and Johansson will now face criminal prosecution.

While piracy in Sweden is often associated with torrent site The Pirate Bay, streaming portals like Swefilmer (which launched in 2011) and Dreamfilm have become really popular over the last few years. According to Swedish research quoted by the Torrentfreak report, Swefilmer and Dreamfilm counted for 25% of all web viewing in the country last year. Swefilmer is currently the 100th most popular domain in Sweden.

Torrentfreak has pointed out that if Dreamfilm does replace Swefilmer as Sweden's top pirate streaming site, it could also end up being entangled in an ongoing court case against its soon-to-be-dead rival.

Universal Music, Sony Music, Warner Music, Nordisk Film and the Swedish Film industry filed a lawsuit against Swedish ISP Bredbandsbolaget (The Broadband Company) last November. The group demanded that the ISP block access to The Pirate Bay and Swefilmer. Bredbandsbolaget refused to comply, so the group is due to have another hearing in October.